frog tasting and overpriced menus.

This is the third day of teaching (Thursday) in this country and I am not feeling my super best! It’s a bit hotter outside today and I think the heat is increasing my sleepiness! I ended up going home to sleep during lunch time today. It was a bit tricky trying to find someone in my school to call my housekeeper to pick me up. I had the challenge of getting the point across that I needed them to call the housekeeper, ask her to pick me up as well as take me home and then bring me back a few hours later. (Note *housekeeper also doesn’t speak english!) Anwyho, I managed to do so and I can confess that there is nothing better than relaxing in air conditioner in the middle of a ridiculously hot day! Definitely hard to force yourself to go back outside to classrooms that are filled with a LOT of children and no air conditioning! I did however manage to do just fine the rest of the day and I really think that nap helped a ton! The kids could tell I wasn’t as cheerful and were actually much better behaved in the afternoon classes! I love how sympathetic kids can be sometimes! Even in a completely different culture! OH and I finally encountered the infamous toliets in Asian cutlure... "the squat toliets". Let me just say that I will ensure I never have to step foot into such a bathroom again. haha. Definitely an experience that I hope to never repeat! :)
Dinner this evening was at the Chuong Duong Hotel and as stated in the glorious travel book, way overpriced for the food! Lol! Go figure! I tried frog for the first time however! Tasted like super greasy chicken. Jonny had ordered it for his meal and when it arrived I could barely look at it! So many creepy parts with bones! Eek! But he kindly picked the meat of the bone so I could try it! I’m so pathetic with food sometimes! Haha! Oh well. In the end, it was a nice little dinner down by the river. On the way home we checked out “Bar Coffee” which was a roof top bar with a VERY nice breeze. Even though the drinks we incredibly overpriced, the view and breeze made it worth it!

50th B-day Party

This is now the second day of teaching English to the youngsters (Wednesday). Nothing too different from the last, besides me being too tired! Kids are still learning body descriptions like “thin, fat, pretty ugly, short , tall..” except this time I was able to try and come up with some games to help me feel less bored and make them more excited :) After school we went home to celebrate John’s 50th birthday! Our local supporters arrived with presents and a cake and balloons! (Megan and I had only considered a cake and were worried that we were totally slacking in the department of celebrating when we saw all the gifts brought by the locals!!) Yes and all the stuff was very nice and cute and thoughtful (pen, scroll with Vietnamese drawing (which I totally want) a tie, and tie clip). After John had his cake we all (our local supporters extended friends included! Yay for hanging out the locals) headed out to Ling’s (cute 12 yr old girl who speaks fluent English) Dad’s photography studio and had a photo shoot! It was so funny and I hope we get to see the pictures one day! Definitely one of our most random and unexpected experiences in Vietnam! After the photo shoot we headed to this really cute café somewhere (no clue but through a bunch of sketch random alley ways on the back of a motor bike) to enjoy some karaoke and sandwiches from this girls dad’s store. Can’t tell you what form of meat or actually anything that was in the sandwich but it was definitely nice! Once the karaoke began we realized how wrong our first thoughts were of how it would be. The karaoke was a style in which the listeners all got up to ball room dance to! Pretty full on! We ended up karaoke singing happy birthday on stage to John (the only English song of the evening hehe) and were given flowers whilst up on stage. Super cute! I also danced with Ling's dad at one point because, as she said, hes a great teacher for dancing. (Really he was just a super cute old dad who just likes to do the "old man dance ;) hehe". After a fun and interesting night of Karaoke we all headed back to the guesthouse (my bike driver was texting and driving! lol! who knew! and promised to pick me up tomorrow evening at 7pm. Who knows what she was wanting to do but I definitely managed to get myself out of hanging out. I have essays to write. Still. Eek!

Pictures: Singing Happy Birthday Karaoke style and getting flowers, and hanging out with our locals :)

"my toe?"

Now we are to the point of when we arrived in My Tho… (pronounced Me Ta!! Oh dear I was saying “My toe” all along. WAY off!) Definitely way more humid here… But less crazy bikes everywhere. Our house lady is AWESOME and super sweet. They’re doing our laundry for us for less than one pound a week. SO amazing. And toilets are normal...THANK GOODNESS! Difficult to flush, but oh well. Dinner last night (Monday April April 6th) was funny. John is worse than I am about food. And we went to this cafe across from our house. Now in Vietnam... MOST normal Vietnamese not touristy food places..are outside… including kitchen and dining area. Dogs were running around. Dishes are washed on the ground. Its pretty ghetto… and pretty awesome. However, the cook was smoking a cigarette over the food and John freaked out. So we ended up leaving and going to an open food market. (which clearly wasn't any more hygienic! lol) poor guy. So we had some proper street food like the locals. And I had a massive bone!!! eek! OH and I saw the biggest rat ever! ah! BUT dinner was good. And we bought some groceries! :) Last night (Monday night) was early and we attempted fixing the camera… failed. Oh well. Also, on Tuesday I taught my first lesson. No one speaks English in my school. Besides the random hello. Megan is somewhere else at the local high school where she has a definite increase in communication abilities! Kinda makes me feel a bit alone. But the kids are cute and they mean well. So we will see how well I manage over the next couple of weeks!

Pictures: Jonny and I at the Indochine restaurant, me with some of my students (48 in that class alone!!!), so many wires above ground: serious fire hazard I’d imagine, and typical day in the life for a Vietnamese

Beginning of Vietnam

Sooo as you can see I am already slacking in keeping up with this blog! Goodness! I believe I last left off about me learning/attempting to bargain out in Thailand! So now I can pick up to where we have made it to Vietnam and our airport arrival was a disaster. Ah! Pretty intense waiting on our visas (and time consuming) but we survived! However, since it took so long we saw our bags being carried away by some airport people (who didn't speak English by the way) because apparently they thought we forgot to get them! Crazy! Lol. So after a bit we got them back and headed out, relieved that we'd have someone from STA picking us up... Well... that didn't happen. Oh we were SO mad and sad and confused and clueless on what to do. We didn't have the accommodation address (never gave it to us! Only had the one for Mekong, not Ho Chi Minh) And there were no pay phones to be found, no English speakers, and few English signs. So basically we thought we were screwed... Anywho, after freaking out for like an hour we went to reception and they let me use their phone (3,000/min!) (which is actually not THAT bad) And I called STA. They were like "oh you're in Vietnam??!" talk about me being not very happy!! It was SO unorganized! So they had to let us just take a taxi and get some Vietnamese person to write down the address. And of course the taxi jerk wouldn't put his meter on! I couldn't believe him when he said that we were his first fare for over an hour so he wanted more money! He originally said 350,000 (but me, used to being screwed over in Egypt, Lol, had already asked the receptionist how much it should cost. She said max 150,000). So I told him basically he was rubbish and we wouldn't pay it. We tried to get out and he just took off!!! My goodness! Buuut in the end we just paid 200,000 (I wasn't too too worried because we were getting refunded!) Anywho, it was super nice to be in a house with other people!! We met some kid named Jake, 18 years old. Awesome guy! But Megan and I were so tired (still hadn't slept for the last two nights!!!) that we went to the super fancy (for Vietnamese terms!) cafe behind the house and had a quick lunch, cocktail, and passed out for like 3hours!) When we woke up Karina had moved into our room. She was awesome!! Shes working at an orphanage with disabled children. And she brought LOADS of supplies from her school and gave us some to take down to the delta. (HOWEVER, since I am not working with orphans as I was told originally, this school is not getting the supplies. I am gonna go find an orphanage and take it to them!) John and Jonny (the two guys who are going to be joining us in the delta) were also there when we woke up. So we drug all of them out back to the super cute cafe for cocktails (since it was Jake's last night and a good way for us to all hang out). Then we went into town to the most amazing dinner place. Very Vietnamese and we ate out on the balcony that overlooked the road. Had some amazing Pho. REALLY good. And I tried Saigon beer. Then we went to a roof top bar and had a few more cocktails. This bar was pretty westernized (white folk) So after a few rounds we went to ALLEZZ BO. Or something like that...and proceeded to rack up a bill of 2.5 million. Oh dear. Lol. Now granted we each spent like 20 quid total that was a ton of money in Vietnamese! Awesome! So yea... first really crazy night and it was pretty fun! However, paid for it the next day. Eek! We all got up at like noon. (OHHH AND MEGAN and I stayed up till 6am to watch the sun rise from the top of our roof! AMAZING!! :) ) So anywho, we all got up feeling rough and jumped into a taxi with no food (hoping to find some at the War museum and it didn't have any). I immediately got sick once we arrived. Lol... it was pretty bad. We have NOW discovered its because I took the malaria tablet on an empty stomach. But at the time I just thought it was heat and lack of sleep. After an hour of just sitting in the grass by a machine gun I managed to be ok (and sitting in the random rain storm. lol). The museum was awesome. Clearly very biased and oh... Americans apparently lost. Who knew! haha. I found it interesting on some torture pictures that there was not a translation offered. It made me want to know what was being said!!!! Well we had a Mexican lunch later... very nice however I didn't eat much. Stomach still not loving me. haha. Then went and got manicures with John, Jonny and Megan. We made the boys but they didn't seem to mind! I must say the manicures here are not at all up to the standards set by the American Asians. We thought we were going to the source and they'd be phenomenal! Oh well! We went down to the river at night. Amazing as well. That night was early simply because we all had to be up at 7am to go to the Cu Chi Tunnels the next day. Tunnels were awesome! Tour guide was an actual vet, which was pretty neat to hear his side. Clearly doesn't like Americans. So us Americans tried to stay out of his way and not say much. Lol. But he did it in a joking way. We crawled all through the tunnels which was a bit scary at points when you couldn't see ahead of you. Megan got a bit emotional since she has a ton of people in her family who are involved with war type stuff. I felt bad because I couldn't relate as well! It must be intense seeing stuff that your family members went through!
PS. It was SO HOT! I had never felt so gross before!!! But definitely a neat and worthwhile experience. That night just John, Jonny and I went to an uber posh restaurant geared for Americans. haha (prices were even in dollars!!) Amazing meal and I tried fried banana (SO GOOD!) Walking home I fell on something (fruit probably!). Camera broke the fall (but now camera wont work. I am SO sad!!!) So now I'll need a new one. Which is fun, but expensive... and I was just figuring out some neat stuff with this one. oh well...
Pictures: Me shooting and AK47 (or M60..can’t remember!), Megan and I at a tunnel entrance at the Cu Chi Tunnels, the Delta crew after our manicures, me holding 1 Million Dong!!, and part of our group on the first night 

Ok. So now. Let's pretend this is my first blog about the Asian Experience! (I AM ON THE CONTINENT of ASIA!!!) SO amazing! And I can honestly say I never thought I'd be out here. Of course I talked about it. But seriously. I am really here! Wow!! :) Well anywho, much has already happened in my first week. And as previously said I am just taking bits from an email earlier sent! I promise I'll do my best to try and update regularly in the future!

Going back to Tuesday (yesterday):
It is currently 10:30 in the morning and I'm beginning to think i am dooooomed for teaching english to these young children! My goodness there are SOO many of them! And all they say is HELLO like 5,000 times to me a day! lol (and yes already after only being with them for one hour!) But now I am on lunch break until 2 which is definitely nice! But then I dont leave the school until 5pm. And after only teaching for 45 min and struggling the entire time...I'm pleased to know I do have such a long break! Quite exhausting just trying to teach "eyes, ears, nose, fingers" and This is my nose, and These are my fingers. I think about only one student walked away from that class having the slightest clue what i was saying~Oh well. Practice makes perfect and I have to start somewhere :)

Now REALLY going back!! Back to Thailand!! Bangkok. Pad Thai. For those who know me really well...well, let's just say we'd all agree that there is NO way I'd even look at eating something like it!! Well not only have I tried it, loved it, and cooked it on the street (yes street food...mmm), I actually crave it!!! Goodness!! :) I came to Thailand with an extra bag, strictly prepared for shopping! Well haven't really bought much yet. One purse which I kind of don't like any more. lol. Bracelet (tiffany's knock off). Still like. Sun hat. LOVE. And yea thats about it! Well. On our last night in Thailand we didnt go to bed. Had a couple cocktails on a roof top bar and then went to a western type bar on Kho San road and had some hooka :) Got home at 3:30am showered, packed, and cabbed to the airport fearing for our life. Taxi driver was driving 180 km/hr (no clue how fast that actually is...but it seemed crazy fast! and we didnt have seat belts!) Got to the airport and being girls, had to pay extra because our bags weighed too much for the budget flight. lol. oh dear. Once we got that all sorted we managed to upgrade our flights coming back to Thailand (so we dont get fined again for overweight bags! hehe) And booked to come back a day earlier to Thailand. We were sad bc we werent going to get to see the MASSIVE market because it was only open on weekends. So now we are heading back on Saturday (18th) evening so we can spend all day sunday shopping!!! :) (thats really going to lead to some serious overweight luggage! lol) We'll see how well I do at bargaining this time around! I wasn't as good as I thought I would be with my knockoff purse. The guy said 1500 thai baht originally. And I thought 500 (what I managed to get him down to) seemed like a good deal at the time. Until I went down a few more stalls and another guy tried selling me the same purse for 250. Bummer. Oh well. So I am now prepared to not spend more than 200 on a purse at this big market. Lesson learned :)
Mexican Restaurant in Thailand, Me on Khao San Road, Temple and Cooking Pad Thai on Khao San Road :)

This blog was set up last term, (my first term for my MA), as a part of my Media and Technology course. I have, however, chosen not to use it during the time I set it up. For whatever reason, I think now would be a good time to begin. This will be an easier way for you all to see whats going on during some of my travels (too bad I haven't done this before!!) as well as provide me some motivation to maybe try to journal better :)
So here I am. In an internet cafe (if you could call it that!) in My Tho, Vietnam...the gateway to the jungle..I mean Mekong Delta! :) It is 34*celcius (HOT) and unbelievably humid!! Im in long sleeves, trousers (for you Brits!), and closed toes shoes. And not by choice! I am currently on my lunch break from teaching little Vietnamese children how to speak english and boy did I need the break!!! I never realized how hard it could be! I'll give further details later on about teaching BUT I have already been many places so since this is kinda a first post (minus the original for my class) I think I should quickly breif others on where I've been so far!
London Study Abroad 06!!! -France, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Holland, Egypt...and maybe some others?!
So far all places have been amazing. Favourite place...hmm. I can't say! Each experience has been so unique! Some have been challenging and some relaxing, but overall I can say I've taken something away and learned something more about myself, which is exactly what traveling should be about! Maybe one day I'll go back and give little tidbit blogs about the previous places traveled when I return back home to London (yes, my home in London!!), but for now, I am indeed in rural Vietnam and loving every minute of it! My next post will be practically a full email sent to someone earlier! (their suggestion! :) ) But basically it will get you up to date as to what has gone on so far in my Asian experience!!